Luke Clausen’s Five Springtime Fishing Tips

Spring is a great time to go fishing. Generally, the lakes aren’t busy, the fish are feeding and on beds. The weather in most of the country is pretty nice. Here are five tips for catching more fish in the spring.

1. Locate the spawning flats

The first thing I do on any body of water this time of year is find the spawning flats. From there I will determine what stage the majority of the fish are in. If they are spawning, then I have found the areas to fish. If they are not spawning yet, they will most likely by staging at the nearest point headed towards deeper water. For colder areas of the country, you might have to continue out towards the deeper wintering areas to find the fish.

2. Mix up the presentation speeds

What I mean by this is to have a variety of different speed baits ready to fish.

Fast: For fast moving baits I will have a Megabass Knuckle 60 square bill crankbait and a Z-Man Chatterbait. Both of these baits I canfish as fast as I can reel or slow them down a little.

Moderate: For moderate speed baits the Megabass VisionOneten jerk bait will allow me to fish a hard reaction bait with a lot slower presentation than the square bill crankbait. I’ll also work a shaky head with a Z-Man finesse worm.

Slow: For slow moving baits its hard to be a stick bait like the Z-Man Zinkerz wacky rigged and fished weightless. For a secondary option, I’ll fish a Texas-rigged Flappin Crawz.

3. Find the schools

This is the time of year when fish are bunched up. When you find fish, there will generally be lots of them.

4. Don’t limit yourself to sight fishing

Sight fishing can be a great way to catch a lot of quality fish. However, don’t just sight fish. For every fish that is on a bed, there could be four or five fish that you can’t see. Sight fishing can be fun, but the best fishing days are generally when you can’t see the fish.

5. Remember to have fun and learn

It’s easy to say, but this sport is about more than just catching fish. It’s about enjoying the great outdoors, the people you are with and the process of finding and catching fish. There is so much more to fishing than catching and landing fish–enjoy the process, enjoy figuring out how to catch fish, and learn something every time you go on the water.